Wladimir Köppen

Hello. My name is Wladimir Köppen. I was born a very long time ago, on September 25th, 1846, in a big country called Russia. Even when I was a little boy, I was fascinated by two things: the plants growing in the garden and the weather changing in the sky. I loved watching fluffy white clouds drift by and feeling the warm sun or the cool rain on my face. I wondered why some plants grew in warm places and others grew in cold places, and I knew that one day, I wanted to find out.

When I grew up, I got a very important job studying the weather. In 1875, I moved to a city called Hamburg in Germany to work at the German Naval Observatory. My job was to help sailors know what kind of weather they would find out on the big, wide ocean. I would look at the clouds, measure the wind, and help create weather forecasts to keep them safe. I even used big weather balloons to study the air high up in the atmosphere. It was my dream to understand how the air, the sun, and the land all work together.

I had a big idea. I realized that the kinds of plants that grow in a place can tell you a lot about its climate. For example, you won't find a cactus from a hot, dry desert growing in the cold, snowy Arctic. Using this idea, I started to create a special map of the world. I used different colors and letters to show all the different types of climates. There were zones for tropical rainforests, dry deserts, snowy mountains, and everything in between. I first published my map ideas around 1884, but I spent many, many years making it better and better.

I lived to be 93 years old, and I spent my whole life being curious about our planet. Today, scientists, teachers, and students all over the world still use my climate classification map to understand Earth's different environments. It makes me happy to know that my work still helps people learn about and take care of our wonderful world.